


Interlude IV

by AnnetheCatDetective



Series: Interludes [4]
Category: Murdoch Mysteries
Genre: Feeding Kink, First Dates, M/M, or at least the first glimmer of one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-06
Updated: 2020-04-06
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:20:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23505271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnnetheCatDetective/pseuds/AnnetheCatDetective
Summary: Dialogue from AIOSJack spots Llewellyn on his way home, and realizes it's not such a coincidence.
Relationships: Jack Walker/Llewellyn Watts
Series: Interludes [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1679167
Comments: 34
Kudos: 49





	Interlude IV

Detective Llewellyn Watts… Jack hadn’t expected to see him, not so soon, had expected him to think better… lay low a while and perhaps dare stopping by the shop even if not as a customer. He had liked the idea of seeing him again, but he hadn’t banked on it. And yet there he is, an empty street, a bench before a shuttered shop, a pretzel in his hand. A faraway sort of look…

Would he mind, terribly, Jack approaching him? He’d come to his home, after all, he’d… he’d said all the things he’d said, he couldn’t mind a hello, at least. Even if he’d thought better of deepening their association, it would be only polite to… just to say hello, to a man who’d-- well, he’d really saved him a lot of trouble, hadn’t he? No matter the evidence and no matter his testimony, Jack doesn’t hold any illusions-- if he’d been put on the stand as Owen Paxton’s vengeful ex-lover, he’d have swung. The papers would have painted him as a bit of rough trade after Owen’s money, at _best_. The whole thing would have broken his mother’s heart.

“Detective!” He greets, waving-- though he drops his hand quickly, self-conscious. It feels too broad a gesture, even on an empty street. 

Llewellyn jumps up, turning towards him-- his face _lights_. Jack feels _struck_ , he’s not sure the last time a man’s face lit like that just to see him.

“Mister Walker. Um, would you like…?” He hesitates, scratching briefly at his jaw before pointing to his bench. Anxious, but hopeful, which is heartening.

“Oh, for a minute.” Jack smiles, moving to take a seat. “If I’m not intruding. Is this supper?”

“Mm.” Llewellyn sits back down, eyes flickering to the pretzel in his hand, to Jack, and then away again. “My current landlady doesn’t cook. Which is just as well, it saves me the trouble of having to separate out what I would and wouldn’t eat from a set menu… and rates are lower if you’re paying for the room alone and not not to be fed, I imagine.”

Jack supposes that’s a fair point, Llewellyn had mentioned flirting with both vegetarianism and a kosher diet, and even if he were to decide neither to be very important to him in the end, while he’s figuring it out, he has to eat. 

He does have to eat. Jack doesn’t think he’s being entirely selfish in hoping he decides vegetarianism is not for him after all. He really does have to eat something more than this…

“Not very homey, though. And you still have to eat _somewhere_.” Jack says. He could be somewhere. Well, not at the shop, no, not given either of Llewellyn’s restrictions, but he could figure it out, at home, something a bit more… meal-like than this. But he can’t say that. It’s rather too soon to ask if you can feed a man, the way he’d like…

The way he thinks he’d like…

The way he knows he’d like, if Llewellyn would like, but when does one bring a thing like that up? 

Llewellyn glances at him just briefly, sidelong, and shrugs. “No. Well. I prefer to eat several small meals over the course of a day over sitting down to two or three heavy ones. I find it’s easier to keep mobile.”

“I suppose you have to be ready to leap into action with little notice.” Jack smiles, leaning in slightly, turning towards him slightly. Very slightly-- it’s got to be imperceptible, to anyone who might pass. He can’t be seen to be flirting-- and Llewellyn can’t be seen to be flirted with, by him. 

“It’s usually not _that_ exciting. Or-- it’s rarely so dangerous. But it does involve being on the move.” Llewellyn laughs, ducking his head. “Ah-- can I offer you…?” 

He draws something out of his pocket-- another pretzel, wrapped in a clean handkerchief. He gives it a little shake, so that one corner of the handkerchief falls away.

“If you’ll need that later--” Jack stops. Llewellyn had chosen this bench, between his shop up the street and the turn towards his home, he’d brought a second pretzel, he’d sat here barely picking at his first and letting it go cold, because… he’d hoped to see him? He’d bought the second _for_ him. Didn’t that make some sense? Maybe it’s wishful thinking, and yet… “I wouldn’t be imposing?”

“You would not be. I… I took the liberty of-- I thought, if you took the streetcar home, then it wouldn’t matter, because you wouldn’t see me. And that if you bicycled, you might take a longer route if the road was smoother or the scenery more pleasant, but that if you walked, you would come by the most direct way between your shop and the house.” He says, every word adding to the off-balance feeling Jack struggles with as his hopes are confirmed. He only glances up once he’s said that much, only for a moment, eyes wide and dark and lovely, before they cut back to the pretzel in his hand. “And so then I hoped that you had walked today.”

Jack reaches out, still hesitant even now, but utterly charmed. His heart swells, he dares to let his hand touch Llewellyn’s through the thin barrier of the handkerchief. “A chance encounter. No one to catch you calling at the boarding house, no one to question it… How fortuitous, then.” 

And he wishes he’d dared more, he knows the feel of Llewellyn’s bare hand, but they’re out on a public street, it’s empty now but it won’t stay that way forever, and the evening is still young.

“I wanted to see how you were holding up.” Llewellyn says, and the floodgates open. Jack tells him things he thought he’d never be able to say, things he hadn’t know how to say to himself.

Jack doesn’t know where it all comes from, but he thinks it all needed to come. He needed someone to hear it. Someone who wouldn’t argue with him about what he and Owen had been and what it was allowed to mean to him now, who could only accept his side of things-- and he does. Jack hadn’t realized how defensive he’d been feeling and how little he expected to simply be trusted, until Llewellyn tells him he trusts him to know Owen best.

He doesn’t know what to say to that. 

And then, as the two of them sit and not-know what to say, they each take a bite from their respective pretzels, and there’s a moment.

There’s a moment where it’s as if nothing else exists, where Llewellyn’s eyes flutter closed, where he all but moans around a mouthful of pretzel, even if it’s no longer fresh and hot, where he gives himself over fully to the moment, to his enjoyment of it. He is… captivating. 

This, for a pretzel that’s gone a bit cold, how much more for something hot? Did he have a sweet tooth, or did he prefer savories? Or was he so enthusiastic for all of it? And did this full hedonistic enjoyment extend to all areas of life? If this is Llewellyn Watts in a moment of public abandon, to what heights could he be brought behind closed doors? And in what ways could Jack arrange to bring him to those heights? Even just to see him again, like this, free for one breathtaking moment…

It’s not that he savors, really-- he goes in for a large bite and he gets through it quickly, but he _loves_ it, there is an earnest passion… and really, is ‘earnest’ not the best way of describing him? He’s… refreshing.

And then the moment is over, and he’s looking at Jack, who is looking at him with what must be an obvious fascination.

“What?”

“Nothing?” He ventures-- feels only a little guilty to be glad for Llewellyn’s inexperience in being openly desired by men, if that’s saved him the mortification of being caught out in such a moment. Too unguarded, too wanting… 

“Crumbs on my face, or…?”

“No, no. Nothing like that.” Jack has to look away, his face feels hot, is he blushing? Is it obvious? What is the matter with him?

Well, he knows what’s the matter with him, a little, but this is… different. Yes, he likes to feed people, there’s a sense of satisfaction in it that nothing else really brings, and he likes to be able to cook for a man more than anything, and yes, sometimes if he’s cooked for a man-- a man he’s really cared for-- then there is something to watching that meal enjoyed, which… well, which verges on a sort of heat. But he _hadn’t_ cooked for Llewellyn. Llewellyn had brought food to him. So why the sudden feeling catching hold of him, swooping down through his stomach and stirring up flames?

But then… hasn’t Llewellyn looked at him, too? Perhaps not in so embarrassing a fashion, but hasn’t he admitted to finding fascination? Is it so bad, really?

“Ah. Well… as long as nothing’s…” He glances Jack’s way, back down. Licks his lips-- such a simple subconscious thing, and yet that’s what does Jack in.

“It… has occurred to me, since last we spoke… you would have had to look very closely, to find yourself distracted by my freckles, as pale as they are at present.” He says-- aside from the initial halting, blurts it out.

“Ah.” Llewellyn suddenly looks caught out himself-- though again, Jack seems to be missing the mark, since he looks less like a man being flirted with now and more like a boy afraid of being punished for something.

But then, that’s early days, isn’t it? Perhaps it’s not that he’s missed Jack’s signals at all, perhaps it’s only natural that on being flirted with-- out here on the street!-- he should immediately cringe from some coming punishment. There’s so much he must not have learned yet, about how to live his life. Yet it’s Jack he looks directly to, to see if he’d done wrong. Not a darting glance to see if he’d been caught, but the question of what Jack, having caught him, would do about it.

There’s something in that which Jack finds unutterably sweet, he only wishes he knew how to ease those nerves. Perhaps in private, he could. Out here? He hardly knows. Somehow Llewellyn Watts feels like uncharted territory.

“Was it when you asked me yourself, about where I’d been the night before?” He asks, tearing off a bite of his pretzel. Had that only been a couple of days prior? He feels as if he is living in a whole new _world_ from that one. Like everything in his life can be divided into Before and After he’d been arrested for murder. 

It had been different, from previous arrests. 

But… when Detective Watts had asked him for the truth, he’d looked at him closely, lingered on him… his face, his forearms-- his hands also? He’d lingered on him, and then even as he’d turned to go, he’d looked back, and at the time Jack had naturally assumed scrutiny, but how much was Detective Watts, man beholden to his duty, and how much was _Llewellyn_ , a creature of just as much want as any other man?

The slight touch of fear softens into mere shyness, as he nods. It’s admission enough, and he takes a bite-- a _large_ bite-- from his own pretzel, and Jack is still holding a piece of his, pops it into his own mouth before he can make any sort of embarrassing noise of his own at the way Llewellyn _enjoys_ , the way he seems set on _more_ , on sating something in himself which craves _more_. It’s the size of the bite, the way it fills his mouth, the way he can see just how full, watching him chew, which…

Should not feel like this.

But he watches Llewellyn take another bite, another, ravenous and unselfconscious, and the _hunger_ it ignites in him is one that can’t be satisfied by food alone, or at least not by his own. 

He wants to watch him, and it has nothing to do with the satisfaction of having provided a good meal. It’s keener than that feeling ever was, more… _physical_. But he wants to see him eat, see him enjoy himself, see him… 

“I should return the favor, next time.” He waves the last of his own, to clarify.

“Oh-- I… I don’t know.” Llewellyn looks at him as if seeing him for the first time, the way a rabbit views an approaching fox, and Jack tries to shutter his disappointment. He’s tumbled headlong into wanting too much, which he supposes he could have expected, but he _likes_ Llewellyn, he wants to take care of him in some small way, even just to repay the kindness he’s already shown, he wants him to feel secure in his company, he… he doesn’t want to be looked at, like he’s dangerous. He’d told the man as much at the start, but… And a fresh anguish rises in those eyes, Llewellyn leans forward just slightly, the uncertain frown trembling. Is the fear not of him, really? Not at all? “I mean, I know. That I would… enjoy that. Not when I might be free, or if-- if it would be inconvenient somehow, when I am. I… I didn’t think ahead that far.”

Jack relaxes, instantly. Not afraid of him-- afraid of the world they’re trapped living in, maybe, or afraid of wanting him, but not afraid of _him_ , and not so afraid he won’t see him again. Only cautious, which Jack can well understand.

“And you’re a man accustomed to thinking ahead.” He nods.

“At times. It depends. I… can enjoy the unexpected. But I like to take care, I suppose.” Llewellyn says, ducks his head just slightly-- it’s hard to say whether he might blush, but he has the body language of a man who might.

Jack thinks they understand each other very well, where taking care is concerned. Care is vital, to men in their position, something so many of Owen’s friends could never understand. Even Jack’s own friends… they all have university backgrounds, they all move in circles with artists, with theatre types, with _money_ , none of them truly understand the world _Jack_ lives in. Glen had-- another thing he liked about him, when compared to Owen’s other friends. But Glen had admired that freedom, his caution had been pure necessity up until… He hadn’t understood Jack’s desire for an unexamined life. He hadn’t truly understood, no one had, that Jack was happy being… quiet. Un-flamboyant. That he wasn’t giving up something by speaking as he did and dressing as he did and working a trade, that if they all woke up in a brave new world where men were free to love, he would not change the way he lived overmuch. He would be free to love openly and that would make a difference, but he wouldn’t suddenly change the way he presented himself. He would just be himself, without the everpresent crushing fear.

Not that Glen would change much, effete wasn’t his style either, but he would… he would be different in that world, by a little bit, in a way Jack would not. Louder in a different direction, perhaps. Jack would just be Jack. Only… maybe he would be a Jack who could take Llewellyn’s arm, touch his hand when he asked him if they could meet again.

“I can appreciate that. I think…” Jack looks down, unable to put all his thoughts into words, and unable to look at Llewellyn as he tries. “Care is… important. It’s vital. But… a little room for the unexpected isn’t so bad. I… I always tried to… _plan_ for things. Control things. It was something… I had to learn to be flexible. I’m not certain how well I’ve done. Better than I was.” He dares a look, catches sight of those dark eyes on him, the openness in them. “So. The first of my bad points, but… one I am trying to strike the balance with.”

“Not such a bad point.” He smiles, just barely-- but just barely in a way Jack thinks he knows. “Or, if it is, you’re certainly not alone in it.”

And somehow the conversation carries on from there. Somehow Llewellyn _likes_ him, after all this, and somehow neither of them really puts their foot in it-- indeed, he finds it charming, oddly and deeply charming, to hear how Llewellyn thinks he would have committed a murder, and how he’d discounted him as a serious subject from the start-- and somehow, somehow, he thinks Llewellyn doesn’t want to say goodnight any more than he does, and if they were closer then he thinks he might invite things he doubts Llewellyn is ready for. They might both want them. But in the falling shades of evening, perhaps there are things a man might dare.

And… there’s good news in it as well, that it’s the state of the large-scale meat industry which had turned him away from it, that he might be as happy going back to a more inclusive diet. Though Jack isn’t certain how well he could feed him, if he does keep kosher. He doesn’t know enough about it, but he knows who he could ask.

“Actually, I did reconsider the wisdom of my commitment to vegetarianism.” Llewellyn adds, before the subject can change. Nervous, the way his shoulders come up, the way he sucks his lower lip in.

“Since the last time we spoke?” Jack smiles. Yes, he could go down and ask Jonathan Metger, even without other business to excuse a visit by-- ask what he might do, if he wanted to be able to feed a friend, and make him feel welcome. He doesn’t think he’d mind. And they’d likely talk shop a little, and he’d ask after the family, and it would be a pleasant enough time, he’d just have to close down a little longer than usual.

Llewellyn shakes his head, and turns his attention once more towards the devouring of his pretzel, which very nearly distracts Jack from the question of when, when he has the highly inappropriate thought that were he to loosen Llewellyn’s tie and unfasten his collar, he could watch him _swallow_.

“Over the course of this conversation?”

“You’ll laugh.” Llewellyn looks away, shoulders once again rising up around his ears.

“Never.” Jack promises, and tries once again to move nearer, in increments no one else could detect.

“In Paxton’s house.” He says, rather miserably all things considered. Jack thinks there’s something sweet about it, that he would have reconsidered based on wanting to-- to have an excuse to see him again, after the case? On the strength of the moment they’d had there?

“When I found your evidence?” He smiles.

“When I saw your photograph on the wall, and my inspector pointed you out as his butcher.”

Jack has to turn away, feels hot all over. All of that playing coy and saying he’d laugh if he knew, and he’d had that line in his pocket? The _idea_ , the very idea of Llewellyn seeing his picture and knowing his trade and deciding to change his diet just to know him, he… he doesn’t know, but even if it is just a line, it’s such a flattering one, and he has to clamp a hand over his mouth to stop the nervous laugh or the shocked yelp, to hide whatever combination of giddy grin and confused gawping and awkward grimace he might be wearing, to stop himself from being too much in this moment, they are on a public street and a man has just suggested that the sight of him in that photograph was so alluring as to be worth rearranging his life.

_That_ photograph. His face heats further still. The island, the beach, the _bathing costume_ , that was Llewellyn’s introduction to him. And the idea that _that_ could sway him is flattering indeed.

“That is not true.” He tries valiantly to keep his voice even. He’s not sure how well he succeeds.

“It was a fleeting thought.” Llewellyn shrugs, he can see the movement out of the corner of his eye. 

“That is not true, and you--” He looks back to him and can’t help but smile, so wide and unrestrained he feels a moment of fear over it, the kind of smile he knows would mean nothing to a stranger and yet it feels so much like the first blush of love on his face he has to turn away. “My photograph. Absolutely not.”

“Well, I didn’t take it into serious consideration, but the thought was there.” Llewellyn sounds half apologetic, half… half of what he thinks flirtation sounds like, on him. He can be a hard man to read, but not impossible-- only unused to this. 

Jack is used to men who read differently-- not men of their kind, though they have their own ways of reading, but a genuine and harmless off-beat-ness. It doesn’t put him off, it just means he has to take a little care to know he’s interpreting him right. He thinks a man who can make him feel this way deserves a little care.

Jack gets to his feet, gives Llewellyn a look he hopes he catches the meaning in, even unversed as he is. 

“It’s late, I should-- are you going this way?”

Llewellyn rises after him, dusting away any possible crumbs, all earnestness and nerves, all wide brown eyes and the posture of a man afraid to take up space in the world, the space he deserves. “As a matter of fact, I am. I could… escort you. Not that you need-- Not that I-- To the front door of your building?”

“To the front door of my building. I would like that.”

He doesn’t quite know what to say, as they fall into step together-- as Llewellyn jogs around him to walk at the edge of the pavement. He watches the way he tenses when drivers or bicyclists pass too close by, slight but there. He doesn’t flinch away or draw closer, merely… tenses, the same as he tenses when other pedestrians pass them by. Well, he knows what that’s like… walking with a man you can’t show your feelings towards, hating to have others intrude upon your own quiet world. It’s the other things, that Jack finds himself warmed by. The idea that it matters to him, that if something as ultimately inconsequential as a wheel going through a puddle or a bicyclist veering off course were to happen, it would happen to him and not to Jack-- that escorting him home _means_ something to him, beyond the company.

If it wasn’t for one Detective Llewellyn Watts, he might be sitting in a cell even now, waiting to go to trial, waiting to mount the scaffold, waiting to be punished for the death of a man he’d touched and sat with and mourned… and even now, even with such minor stakes, Llewellyn walks a little taller keeping him safe. He steps down into the gutter rather than walking single file, every time they pass others, he _keeps_ himself between Jack and the street. And when Jack catches his eye, he smiles and looks away, and looks back again.

“Thank you, for wanting to see me. I’m glad I was on your way.” Jack says, as they reach his building, as he breaks from Llewellyn’s side to mount the steps. Not so late that he needs his key, but late enough he doesn’t suppose he can invite Llewellyn up... He wants to, but he thinks he wants too much, and still too soon. If what Llewellyn really does want is a proper courtship-- mustn’t he, the way he’d walked with him, and looked at him, and smiled?-- then a little more time, before he asks that of him. As long as there’s a next time coming, as long as he can enjoy watching him again as he did this time... “And I would like to-- If we run into each other again. Buy you a pretzel.”

“Thank you, for joining me. It was… pleasant.”

This is goodnight, but he’s not ready for it to be. He’s not ready to see Llewellyn go-- has to stop him before he turns, has to jog back down the steps.

“Oh-- before you go!” He joins him, despite the danger of it, despite the thought of neighbors who might look from their windows and see him standing in the light, to be close to this man. To make up a reason to keep him, bald as it is. “I nearly let you walk off with crumbs. I should have seen before, but it’s the wrong side.”

They both know it’s a lie-- Llewellyn had dusted away any crumbs from before, not that there had been much, the pretzels hadn’t been inherently crumb-y. They both know that this is a bare pretense to allow Jack to touch him, to stroke over his chest, just through the heavy material of his coat. Well… not that heavy. All right for an evening like this, but thin for a coming winter, and he finds himself wondering if he has another.

He finds himself wondering how it would feel to touch his chest, with fewer layers between them. A jacket, a waistcoat, a shirt. His skin.

“I should thank you.” Llewellyn says, his gaze focused on where Jack’s hand rests, still touching him. Where he thinks he could stay all night, if it wasn’t for all the reasons he couldn’t.

“Don’t mention it. Have a good evening, Detective.” He says, before he realizes they’re close to each other, alone, there’s no need to protect them with formality. No need to keep that name from rolling like music from his lips. “ _Llewellyn_.”

The look on Llewellyn’s face makes him feel about ten feet tall.

“Jack. And you.” He doesn’t quite lift his hat, but he touches it. “Pleasant dreams.”

He can only imagine they will be, now. Flirted with, escorted home-- not just walked with, _escorted_ , properly, like a… like a date. A small date, a simple one, but close enough.

He heads back towards the front door, waving, and he keeps watching even as Llewellyn turns to go-- back the way they came.

“Detective Watts?” Jack calls, before he can think better of it.

“Mm?” Llewellyn turns back to look at him-- his heart shouldn’t leap at that, the way it does. 

“I thought I was on your way.” He finishes lamely. Wonders how far past his own turning he’d come, just to walk him. 

The smile Llewellyn gives him, from beneath his own separate halo of lamplight, could make a man do rash things. And that’s before he opens his mouth and reduces Jack to jelly.

“You were my way. Goodnight.”


End file.
